Chris Reed
Professor of Electronic Commerce Law
The perceived problem
 “If I put my information in the Cloud then I lose all my
rights to it”
 But is this true?
 Worth examining for different types of consumer cloud
service
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Dropbox
Google Docs
Facebook
Dropbox terms
 By using our Services you provide us with information, files, and
folders that you submit to Dropbox (together, “your stuff”). You
retain full ownership to your stuff. We don’t claim any ownership
to any of it. These Terms do not grant us any rights to your stuff
or intellectual property except for the limited rights that are
needed to run the Services, as explained below.
 We may need your permission to do things you ask us to do with
your stuff, for example, hosting your files, or sharing them at
your direction … You give us the permissions we need to do those
things solely to provide the Services. This permission also extends
to trusted third parties we work with to provide the Services, for
example Amazon, which provides our storage space (again, only
to provide the Services).
Google Docs terms
 Some of our Services allow you to submit content. You retain
ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in
that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.
 When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services,
you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to
use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such
as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other
changes we make so that your content works better with our
Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly
display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this
license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and
improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license
continues even if you stop using our Services …
Facebook terms
 You own all of the content and information you post on
Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through
your privacy and application settings. In addition:
 For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like
photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the
following permission, subject to your privacy and application
settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP
content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP
License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP
content or your account unless your content has been shared
with others, and they have not deleted it.
Loss of control not ownership
 Loss of control varies with
 Funding model for the cloud service
 Long-term ambitions of service provider
 Ownership is determined before information enters
the cloud
 Ownership ≠ control (though we lawyers tend to act as
if it does
 Control determined by terms of service
 Little scope for negotiation outside bespoke B2B cloud
deals
Information created outside the
cloud
Some minor uncertainties
 Berne Convention solves most copyright ownership
problems
 Except where non-Berne national acts within a Berne
country but cloud server is non-Berne
 Uncertain geography may impact purely
national/regional rights
 EU Databases Directive

Is the qualification nationality/residence, place database is
made, or both?
 UK’s copyright in computer-generated works
A real problem
 Information generated by the service provider
 Metadata relating to customer’s activities
 Derived data, usually aggregated
 Service provider will clearly be the owner of this
information
 But what about the customer
 Are the customer’s interests affected?
 Does the customer have any rights of control?
Metadata and derived data
Does the customer have an
interest?
 No copyright claim
 Generation is not secondary infringement because of
licence
 Bailment claim?
 Possible claim as confidential information
 Generated by using customer’s confidential information
 “broad principle of equity that he who has received
information in confidence shall not take unfair
advantage of it” (Seager v Copydex)
 But is the provider’s use unfair?
Resolving the problem
 Transparency solves almost everything
 Clarifies customer’s expectations re control, use and
data derivation
 Helps understand meaning of provider’s licences
 Clarifies financing model – eg for “free” services
 Helps avoid disputes

Cf Facebook model for changing terms
 But some risks remain
 Particularly reidentification from anonymised data
 May need addressing in some B2B deals